SDS activists were influenced by many people, experiences,
events, and writings. This website welcomes SDS veterans to contribute
suggestions for other links as well as their own writing on important
influences on their political development.
Here, we present one organizer-writer-thinker
who was not widely published but who had an influence on the development of some
people in SDS.
Clayton Van Lydegraf (1915-1992) was a
long-time political activist in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.
He was one of very few veteran activists of the Old
Left who early-on understood the importance and vitality of the new generation
of activists coming up in the mid-1960s, young people who were influenced and
inspired by the Civil Rights movement and who were motivated by opposition to
the Vietnam War.
Two of his articles in particular circulated among SDS
members:
The Object
is to Win 1967. Third edition, 1971. This paper was especially
noteworthy in its influence upon the new movements of the late 1960s. While
some of the material is obviously dated, the article is of historical value in
understanding the development of the ideas of the Weather Underground. Also,
it is masterful in defining and describing concepts of revolutionary strategy.
The
Movement and the Workers 1969. Second edition, 1972. A helpful
treatise on the role of the U.S. working class and the relationship of
revolutionaries to it. This article had an impact on some segments of the New
Left.
Click here for more
articles by Clayton Van Lydegraf.
